dogs are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture everyone's talking about breaking up the big banks the too big to fail banks essentially broke up big telecom as well talk about that and more in tonight's big picture rumble also. santorum super ticket have taken down romney tell you why not tonight's daily take and you all those stories christians fed to lions nero the butcher but that any of that actually happened last canada mosses and its conversations great lines. you need to know this mexico's congress passed

a landmark billed thursday that will dismantle that country's powerful telecom and television monopolies under the new regulations the state will have the power to break up any company that controls more than fifty percent of either the television or the telecom industry's recent years mexico's telecommunications and television industries have consolidated under two companies america movil and televisa american bowl video on by the way by the way is owned by carlos slim the world's richest man the result has been predictably disastrous for mexican consumers higher prices and poor service accompanied the rise of the telco it's things are that different frankly here in the united states or telecom industry is essentially a doowop only of eighteen t. and verizon the quality of american cell phone service lags far behind the rest of the developed world and the prices are a lot higher time warner and comcast dominate the cable t.v. and internet markets are from customers just as little bang for their buck but here's the thing the laws needed to break up big telco and big cable the sherman

antitrust act of the. since one thousand nine hundred the government just isn't in force in it and hasn't since ronald reagan's second year of office isn't it time we started using it again let's rumble. it's friday you ready to rumble joining me for tonight's big picture rumble our marc harrold libertarian commentator attorney and author k. steiger managing editor of the ross story and adam bitly editor in chief of net right daily welcome to all of you for joining us i just you know i just set this thing up with the mexico tell thing isn't it time for us to start enforcing the sherman antitrust act marc got across the board what we want to know well what we've seen in the enforcement of that act is we've seen that it's another tool for crony capitalism to get in there and to pick winners and losers never been obliged to teddy roosevelt broke the standard well into twenty nine get well that was what it was you know zero ok actually howard taft to finish the job he was

a republican as was it was it was and they broke standard oil and twenty nine companies and everybody's equity went up all kinds of small companies popped up out all over the place particularly in pennsylvania started out and it was a good thing when we broke up a t.n.t. would richard nixon began the breakup of a t.n.t. that ended during the reagan administration it stockholder equity tripled it we may have seen some powers positive outcome in the past of putting these artificial legal restraints into the marketplace but by and large using the and i sure as sherman antitrust act has had disasters all to another calm context and i think if you see it here what you'll see is you'll see the government picking winners and losing losers using it as a tool to favor their friends and and go against their enemies if you had an absolutely uniform in force one of it may have some positive results possibly but you'll never see that it's a monster of a bill and if you go out and start using it i think the results will be bad for the free market not a good small businesses function in america for seventy years yeah when i think what is interesting about the mexico bell is that it allows for

a greater or an investment so you may impact the american cup. moving into the mexican market which would be really interesting and it also allows. carlos slim himself it's not that opposed to this bill because he in exchange will get sort of a trade in expanding into different market sort of. things like comcast paper place which is not all that billionaire run for it is the crony capitalism i mean i think it's interesting obviously the devil's in the details and i think you know like you're saying it's all in how these things are important and you know we haven't seen. administration be particularly tough although they have taken on trust cases you know e-books are instantly it's been a joke i mean you know when reagan proclaimed that he was no longer basically going to enforce it he kicked off that mergers and acquisition mania you know created michael milken and mitt romney and all these billionaires who came about because they were just basically jamming companies together and it's. what you know

monopoly in the gale monopoly you always end up with one person winning and everybody else losing that's the inevitable basis of capitalism call marx identified and while i disagree with his suggestions for solving the problem i think is a balance as was accurate what do we do with this this flaw that's built into capitalism of the tendency toward monopolies ok well first off i wouldn't say having over fifty percent of market shares. so it's because of an op would be one hundred percent so yeah but how could how can any new entrant any small entrant into a market compete with somebody else fifty percent of market share easy because there's another fifty percent out there to grab you could look at this in the sense that you know people like you said this was a poor service is being offered there was lot of complaints against the company competition should be springing up left and right to compete against they haven't had these is because these because it's people like this monopolists dominate markets the question of what it is like it was a monopoly it's just it just wasn't monopoly we're talking of

a company that did not have one hundred percent market share which you would need. first to beat the monopoly standard second there was still room for competition to come about instead of government about it is force this nation but i think i think you could make the argument that this falls into the category of natural monopolies and there's only there's a limited number of cell phone towers there's a limited number of airwaves sure it's all public infrastructure sure i mean in europe in france right now for thirty thirty five dollars a month according to new york times you get one hundred twenty channels of cable you get unlimited cell phone service you get unlimited data on your cell phone and you get. free calls to twenty seven countries or twenty nine countries or whatever it is and the reason why the reason why is because all of that infrastructure stuff all the towers no matter who builds the towers they have to read it to any company it wants to so there's dozens of companies competing with each other because they're making use of the of the natural monopoly the structure would be a reasonable idea to the point that you're trying to make is how easy is that for

a company to actually enter the market and compete on the same level as the other company and i think i'd agree with you that it is really tough to compete against major media company if you know there are things to change as technology changes but we've seen that you know the big companies tend to buy up those little companies that their fix or simply incorporate their product into our latest version of our browser or operating system and the company is dead mark well you get into this idea i mean that idea where you have to all share the towers and say what's great for competition but it's forced competition is a monopoly analogy which i know i understand but like adam was saying somebody has to win and then when you get into it with you what you're talking about is the going to be consumer what the government's jumping in at some point in the game and saying wait a minute somebody is too far in the end i'm talking about nobody one hundred percent so you talk about the government coming in at some point the game of monopoly being wait a minute one person is too far ahead so we got to bring this person up and at the end of it we're going to be roosevelt was using my god i'm going to they're going to have more losers and nobody will ever win i mean you're just going to have too much force competition or whatever you call heavy rows odiously wins the game

monopoly teddy roosevelt was saying anything in excess. ten percent that's why you broke standard oil in twenty nine companies when they broke up eighteen two they broke it in the six companies six operating companies so that would be what eighteen percent no twelve twelve or thirteen percent to six percent i do that so as to eleven percent of the marketplace the government could jump in and stop their success i just don't agree with that what if someone came about and said top ten radio hosts that are on the heavy hundred list they have to give up their air time to do that you have to be ready for your time is very time we get when you're sure you're going to take over not like you want to miss your. point we're going to take the far out of the right to have. a segue great right after the house approved a bill to avoid a government shutdown yesterday speaker boehner set the stage for another showdown between dems and the g.o.p. at his weekly press conference banner indicated the republicans would again demand spending cuts in exchange for raising the nation's debt ceiling which is set to hit in may so he told the huffington post dollar for dollar this seems crazy to me.

adam this is when the debt ceiling is raised all it does is authorize the president to write a check to pay the bills that john boehner already appropriated so it's simply saying yes you may you know you executive branch may pay the bills that we congress have already run up so why is better running around with a gun to his own head or actually to obama said our metaphysic metaphorically speaking well first of all gathered there isn't even a debt ceiling right now it was suspended so there's not a point that they're just going to hit and they have to one of those stories are saying it was well what they say this is that on may eighteenth the debt ceiling that was suspended has to be reset so at that point they'll have to come up with where are they setting us what are we paying for how are we doing this i would be surprised if they punt this again and keep kicking the can down the road you're not going to see this dollar for dollar and this is what boehner has asked for every time and i think that's the problem and the american people are just tired of this

thing over and over again. it's the same story it's a different day they keep doing this over and over again and each time the republicans take a little bit more of a head and a little bit more of a head and i it just seems as if they're not really learning from the past by it because they keep doing this over and they're going to have you know they got one point eight trillion dollars the first time around out of obama the they shrank our economy by that much to keep unemployment high so that people would blame obama and then with the sequence duration they got one point two trillion i mean we're we're pushing over we're pushing three trillion dollars here that they've sucked out of the economy to make the economy bad so people will be upset with the president yet and i think that they're pushing that strategy as much as they possibly can the problem is the american public is sort of tired of it and they just want congress to be grown ups and write a budget and pass a budget but they're just not seeing and the american people are just really sick of it and and i think you know these these this strategy can be effective if they

want government spending but as you're seeing with the questar the programs that that want to be saved get saved military assistance has already been saved you know their pet programs are saved and unfortunately and what that means is that people who don't have enough money to lobby or enough political clout typically are the ones who are the ones who you know mark this is because the sky is falling senator and this is just bad leadership it's a good income and see problem is that both parties do it cried wolf problem here yeah i mean i guess you could go out but you have to remember these house these house represent of the congress and they have to run every two years a lot of them got in there a couple years back and saying we're going to cut spending and this is one way you can say you do it i'm going to cut spending and we're going to do this and i don't care the consequences this become a real tactical you have to remember when i was a senator president obama voted against raising the debt ceiling to this becoming a tactical move that both parties use whoever's in power to try to make the other party look bad to try to make the other but i will tell you this man never held the debts stooge but they've been individual democrats did vote against anybody and

we're making proclamations but there's a difference in how we make sure we called if you would do this. just on patriotic measure the worst thing you can do the democrats did hold us feelings hostage well cap and balance plan was passed in the summer of two thousand and eleven and it went to the senate failed it never went anywhere democrats did not pass that plan and instead pushed the debate all the way up to the to the breaking point the night before when we get the sequester deal so there is a little bit of history where there is some bring some of the ships from both sides didn't run congress they had a senate they didn't even bring it all oh no they didn't have the senate at that point in time and they only had the business democrats again it was dead already but democrats only had the senate for the first thirteen no eleven weeks and after that scott brown got put in and then the good but the republicans. but i think that everything you always identify this by party because it's a republican democrat thing this is a two party problem as well some incumbents. more of tonight's big picture rubble of a very. potentially

deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit starting in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more patrie down. and there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. piece and it is kind of a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might

still be slow to be driving lessons to the urgency if you are exceptions. all. of the bull shit was.

back to the big picture rubble joining me tonight marc harrold case tiger at a bitly let's get back to it according to the third quarter two thousand and twelve federal reserve flow of funds report so your total total u.s. household net worth is a staggering sixty four point eight trillion dollars we have a lot of money forty percent of the by the way twenty six trillion rests in the hands of the top one percent of americans eighty percent of all that worth is in the hands of the top ten percent of americans and if you assume a five percent annual return on assets which is actually pretty good right now but nonetheless assuming that the average annual increase in u.s. household net worth alone is three point two trillion a year enough to pay for almost all the federal budget bottom line here america is if you're really you're rich so isn't it time every time one of these guys comes out and says oh you can't afford america's broken oh we're just you know to say. ok we're not broke america is

a rich country. i think i think you're right i mean we saw a report from backing fifth week that said income inequality is actually becoming permanent we are sort of entrenching ourselves in this era in which economic mobility isn't what it was should we roll back the reagan tax cuts that the you know i mean it's bad and i think it's not a bad idea actually we have a lot of people who you know just can't get it you know that economic mobility of great america and the one nine hundred fifty s. just simply does not exist anymore for a lot of people i think it's really so adam in the one nine hundred fifty s. sixty's and seventy's the top tax rate was ninety one percent in sixty four l.b.j. actually close enough loopholes when he dropped down to seventy four percent that it actually with taxes went up on rich people as kennedy had campaigned on and it was seventy four percent when reagan came in office rolling back the reagan tax tax cuts would take the top rate back up to seventy four. now people are going to pay any of that until they've made about three million dollars

a year why don't we do that if i think we had a prosperous country for forty years. to sit here and say that the government has the right to just seize a certain amount of cash they do it's. article one section eight i'm not disagreeing with what the constitution says but i'm saying that to believe that we can just at whim just keep movin this up that because you were successful the government deserved to take extra from you even more because he says is is increasingly the odds are in the comment was in your own budget they cannot spend within their own restrictions that they supposedly sat on themselves for forty years why should they then be given the light is it to go off so well this time we are going to be nobody who is swallowing it up we spent this movie who is screwing it up adam is a way to take a look at american history look at the last hundred twenty years whenever the top tax rate is below fifty percent so rich people can get hot money and gamble with it they're generally fairly lousy investors and they gamble like crazy and you get

bubbles in bursts and whenever the top tax rate is above fifty percent you have decades literally decades of prosperity because that easy money is no longer leads people are lousy investors to government is even worse with their by taking that no we that is not a not so that is nothing like legal market we just have one minute and a fuck to get out no i don't think so i think the rich should pay their fair share and their fair share is the same percentage as everybody else think about going to station x. a this is equal going to be at wal-mart is the same as mitt romney how about the concept of equal protection this is discrimination against the rich oh ok. you know it's pretty sad and there is that everything that idea that. poor people actually give a greater percentage of their income to charity then people there and their you know greater percentage in taxes sales tax income tax states have the same fica taxes absolutely it's an unfounded and fair game when you look at it marc harrold case tiger at a boiling. thank you all for being with you thank you. granger

report today and bloomberg business week former twenty twelve republican presidential candidates rick santorum and newt gingrich were very close to forming a unity ticket back in february two thousand and twelve in an effort to collectively knock mitt romney out of nomination contention after santorum claimed the iowa caucuses and three other primaries in early february the talk of forming that unity ticket reached its peak job john brabender santorum chief strategist told bloomberg business week that everybody thought there was an opportunity it would send shock waves through the establishment and the romney campaign but the talks over the take a broke down when neither candidate could agree over which one of them would be at the top of that eventually ticket if our political system provided for

a third fourth or fifth party's santorum and gingrich could have simply run on another party ticket and republican leaning voters would have add more choices every generation or so it seems that an american presidential candidate or run on a third party ticket they always lose and they rarely even advance their own interests because they split the votes from the side that they're on charles koch ran as a libertarian ross perot invented the reform party to run ralph nader put up with the green it's not a member got anywhere that's because the united states we use what's called first past the post winner take all election systems. but that wouldn't have been the case if we had instant runoff voting also known as ira v or proportional representation in ited states is one of only a handful of developed countries in the world that doesn't have proportional representation and if those few nations that don't have proportional representation two of them australia and new zealand have instituted instant runoff voting. we

don't have it because we're one of the world's oldest democracies and our constitution was written back in seventeen eighty seven james madison seven hundred eighty eight when he was trying to sell it had this horrible realisation madison realized that we were the first real democracy of major significance since rome and that our democracy was in reality an experiment you also realize that we've first past the post winner take all actions you could have a democracy if there were only two parties so fifty one percent of the vote could win that's a democratic majority but you couldn't have a real small d democracy in a small our republic with more than two parties with three parties thirty four percent of the vote could run the country before parties it could be twenty six percent of the vote five parties twenty one percent that's why in federalist number ten madison beg us not to form political parties what he called factions madison

wrote it maybe could include that a pure democracy by which i mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens who assemble administer the government in person can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. it wasn't until madison was long dead that englishman john stuart mill proposed and basically invented the idea of proportional representation is around eight hundred sixty or whichever party got for example nine percent of the vote that party would then get nine percent of the seats in parliament to put their people into or thirty percent or sixty percent whatever the voters wanted they go proportional representation is the reason why there are so many political parties in germany or israel or france or japan and a host of other developed nations under proportional representation the voices of all the people are heard because it not only allows for but actually promotes multiple political parties there are two ways we can accomplish this democratic

ideal of more than just two political parties here in the united states two ways we can do it here in america right now the first is to have the states change the way they apportion votes to congress in the senate and arguably we could do it with a giant constitutional memo this can all be done at the state level. proportional representation also known as fair voting it's the phrase it's been used increasingly united states actually has a long history in our elections over one hundred cities and counties across our country today use some form of fair vote in your proportional representation to fill various alike the offices fair vote dot org is one of the leading organizations in the fight to bring proportional representation to the halls of congress in the sun to make this happen nationwide in our national elections that organization also advocates strongly for instant runoff voting or ranked. in our current system of voting also known as a plurality voting system three political parties is

a crowd our current two party system discourages new candidates from entering the fray and suppresses new ideas and ascending and descending opinions however instant run of voting creates that democratic ideal of majority rule and voter choice instead of voting i r.v. allows voters to rank candidates in order preference as my first choice this is my second choice this is my third choice that kind of thing so if a candidate receives a majority of first choices that candidate gets elected but if nobody has a clear majority of votes in the first count a series of run offs begin although everybody's already voted using the voter's preferences as indicated on their ballot the candidate who gets the fewest first place votes is eliminated the ballots are all the ballots are all then recounted and if you voted for the guy who got the least number of votes your second choice gets counted it instead. the weakest candidates are continuously eliminated as

their voters ballots are added to the totals of their next choice until one candidate wins a majority of votes things ample of that election when instant runoff voting would have worked wonders for america was the two thousand election between bush gore and nader back in two thousand i voted for ralph nader my wife louise voted for al gore the real reason bush took florida was because the u.s. supreme court stopped a statewide recount because jeb bush and katherine harris illegally knocked about seventy thousand african-american voters off the rolls even before the polls opened but nonetheless ralph nader did get around seventy thousand votes in that election but what if i.r.b. had been in place under ira v if i lived in florida i actually lived for a modest time which is why i felt it was safe to vote for nader if i lived in florida with r.v. i could have voted for ralph nader is my first choice and al gore is my second since they are had the fewest votes and lost my ballot were rolled over to become above a ballot or a vote for al gore just imagine all of the ralph nader votes that were cast across

the country rolling over to votes for al gore surely gore would have won the election and the supreme court never could have stolen it from george bush right now instant runoff voting is used in more than three hundred communities across the country the largest in san francisco berkeley oakland california. and thanks to organizations like fair vote and the green party instant voting is becoming more and more popular across the states but we need to take instead of voting and proportional representation national we need more choices and more voices in our elections it's time to leave behind our eighteenth century electoral system and step into the twenty first century. coming up how did martyrdom become such an important part of the christian experience and is the christian belief persecution just a myth class canada boss it's a knights conversations with great. wealthy

british style. but on the tirelessly.

market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our. goal or. iraq. coming up on my. clock. coming on. the back.